Reframing Hardship: A Holiday Survival Guide

In this episode, I get real about something we’ve all felt at one point: that temptation to sink into self-pity when things get hard (especially during the holiday season!). After a year filled with appealing and advocating for my son, I share a personal story about a recent hearing where things did not go as planned — and how I nearly let it pull me into the “poor me” mindset.

But here’s the twist: I didn’t stay there. Instead, I made a small shift toward self-compassion — and it made all the difference. In this episode, we explore:

• The difference between self-pity and self-compassion 🤔
• How our mindset shapes our experience ✨
• Why self-compassion acknowledges our struggles and gives us the grace to keep going 💜
• Navigating those “grief landmines” during the holidays 🎄

If you're ready to move away from self-pity and give yourself the gift of kindness this season, this one’s for you!

Listen to the previous related episode on mindset shifts: Episode 103

Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

Join the Community:
Pathway to Peace Coaching Community is currently open for enrollment. Instantly get access to authentic community and weekly coaching! Give yourself the gift of growing alongside moms who deeply understand you and will be with you in your joys and sorrows. --------> Learn More HERE

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:05

Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible. And the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created the special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility. In your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone, or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome.

Speaker: 1:14

Hello, and welcome to the special needs mom podcast. Here we are. It's almost Christmas time. And I want to start this episode off with just a little personal story to start us off on the topic. And I can start by saying, there's been a lot of things that have not gotten my way lately. In particular, this past year has been about getting my son onboarded with services that are provided by either state or federal programs and ultimately securing, meeting his needs on a long term basis. And as with many things and how they go in this special needs life experience, it's taking a long time. And the first go around didn't go all that well. So we have had to do a lot of appealing and advocating. I think if I had to give the year of 2024, a two word summary, it would be appeal and advocate and maybe anger. Three A's. Okay, so you know, bummer, but let's go. Let's do the appeal. Let's advocate. Let's do the things that we do. And actually last week we had a hearing and I was super sick. You actually might still hear it in my voice a little bit. I was super sick. I didn't realize how sick I was at the time. You know, you just kind of keep going. And I had a migraine, but I was like, you know, we've been waiting for this thing for four months. So game on. And the judge, who shall rename nameless, had me do, I guess what we could call a virtual double take. Because as they started talking, I couldn't figure out if they were a actual person or a robot. That's how much life was in this person's voice. So turns out it was an actual person. So real heartbeat. behind the voice. And it wasn't just the personality that wasn't perky, but the whole two hour hearing was, was actually causing my attorney and I to like, kind of jaw drop. We were on a phone, so I couldn't see her, but we were texting back and forth and we were both flabbergasted at how this person was essentially treating us. So we don't have the results. Of the hearing, but we anticipate there's going to be more appealing and advocating. So, I started to process this after we got off the call. And I started to wander over, to tiptoe to the land of wondering if there was something wrong with me. Wondering if there was something wrong that it just seems like I keep attracting so much opposition. Like we keep hitting up so many barriers and we have to push and appeal along every step. And I know y'all probably feel me on this. So I started to kind of wonder like, is this me? And relatively quickly. And I was like, no, no, I'm actually not going to go there. I'm going to just recognize that this is just how the process goes. I'm going to decide that this is normal. Nothing's gone wrong. It's just part of the process. The part of the process of working with these agencies is having to appeal and make sure that the care that my son's given is good. categorized correctly, essentially, right? Do I like it? No, but that's kind of what I'm just going to say. I'm going to say this is just normal. So this is a really simple example of a very, very small adjustment in my mindset that put me on a very different trajectory.

5:04

If I'd stayed in this space where I'm contemplating and starting to believe that something's wrong with me or that I had responsibility for how things went, then I would have a very, very different energy. Firstly, I probably have a lot of shame about. What happened and So I probably wouldn't be telling you this story and very likely a lot of different things would happen after that such as I probably Would stop advocating the same way that I have been in the past for my son So, this tweak, making this tweak allowed me to drop the weight of the event and just not put a lot of energy into it, and I essentially move on, really kind of ask, well, what's the next step? Particularly because this is yet another example where I have no ability to change what happened. Really no ability to do anything but wait. Many things. We do like that. Right, ladies? All right. So there is such power to bring just a little bit of this reflection into the things that are running through our heads. Again, essentially, these are the things that are creating the experience that we're having. And that brings me to the conversation I have for us today. I want to put a little preface in the conversation, and that is by disclaiming, no, that saying the perspective I come to you from is that of a coach. And when I start engagements with clients, it's established that our primary relationship is not of a friendship. And the distinction here is that. Sometimes friends, especially friends that you just meet, they don't necessarily say all the things that they might want to say. Think or want to the nature of a coaching relationship is that really, my primary job is to listen and secondary job is to reflect. And so in through listening, purely just listening, trying to understand, trying to see what somebody is saying, and then to reflect back what I hear. And sometimes people are grossly unaware of what actually they're saying, thinking, how they're showing up, patterns, et cetera. And so we say the things as a coach, you know, we don't try to be jerks about it, but we say something that could potentially. Not feel very good or worse, you know, if it was just a friendship, it could, you know, harm the relationship. So the nature of this relationship is that of a coach. I want to disclaim that. And so sometimes I'm going to say things that may be like, I can't believe you said that to me. And the thing that I want to say to this community that I think some of us need to hear Need to hear at varying times in our lives is this, you are not the only one that has it hard. Okay, I know, stick with me. It sounds a little jerky, I know, but I want to contemplate this for a second as a community. By nature, as special needs moms, Our worlds start to get smaller, being isolated is part of the gig, and kind of as, as we evolve, a lot of times two things happen. Our world, like I said, our world gets smaller and it also gets more homogeneous. We surround ourselves with more people that are the same as us, meaning that they also have disabled children. So what happens is that we start to see, well, nobody in our shoes. Many of us start by having zero friends that have disabled children. So we start there and then we start to evolve. And then maybe we start to see only people. That are living the special needs parenting journey. But in all settings, we can easily come up with the same conclusion. And it is something along the lines of nobody has it this hard. Or when we kind of get that community that is more homogeneous to us, more similar to us and does understand the special needs mom journey, we do a crowdsourced version. We get some evidence behind it and we say nobody else has it as hard as special needs moms. You see how that's has a little power, a little, a little little punch in it. And you've heard of confirmation bias, right? So our brains are always, always scanning and filtering and gathering data. This is how our brains keep us safe. They're trying to predict. They're gathering data so they can predict what's going to happen so that they can move our actual physical bodies to where they are going to keep us alive. They, as in our brain, the more data that we have gathered, the more certain we feel and certain is safe to our brains. And this is tricky because we can easily, easily find ways to prove to ourselves or maybe even try to prove it to our family that our lives are hard and harder than most anybody else we know. So why this conversation right now, Kara, come on, we're trying to get our Christmas jam on. Well, precisely this conversation now, because we're headed into the trenches of temptation, temptation to compare and despair and to lose all. Joy and peace along the way. The holiday season for most of us is filled with what I'm going to call grief landmines. There's a holiday parties that are difficult if we're even invited. It's the activities that we can't do as a family because of the needs of our child. It's the gift giving tradition that just pushes us to face the reality of who our child is and is not. It's the stress of having time off with these darling kids and a super hard time filling that time in a way that we mutually enjoy. So filled, filled with grief landmines. I want to present to you two options. And I am obviously encouraging you to take a second. So the first option is really kind of centered in this mentality that nobody has it this hard. So the first option here is that we suffer. We suffer through the next few weeks and months or who knows how long. what I'm describing is we slop around in self pity. Just kind of slap back and forth and different variations of why we have it so hard and especially that comparison of why we have it harder than everybody else. Self pity is defined as self absorbed unhappiness and in this place, you're going to gather evidence for why. Your thesis that nobody has at this hard is true. And you might even ask your friends to join in. You're going to, you know, you're going to tell stories and make sure that they solidify your self pity based story. Now, don't you worry. I think you're going to like alternative too. Cause if you're like, but Kara, like it's hard and I need to tell my story. That is the true experience that I'm having. Okay. You're right. And don't you worry. I think you're going to like option two. So here's the alternative. This is the second option. The one I am obviously encouraging us to take because we've all, I can guarantee we've all settled into the self pity story various times in this journey. I'm just suggesting that we don't stay there. Option two would be if I had to like kind of bottom line it, it'd be the self compassion approach. Thank you. And so this is, you approach yourself with self compassion and you acknowledge yourself for doing hard things, because let's be real, we got some hard things to do ladies. Like earlier when I was talking about this hearing, that was hard. It's hard to do and face the things that we have to do. in this approach, your feelings are real. So I'm not suggesting that this option is like, well, everything's great. No, this is not disingenuous. This is real. This is authentic. This validates your feelings. Self compassion validates your feelings. And the key word in this second approach is and, and invites you to treat yourself with kindness. So I want to emphasize the difference of what I'm pointing to. Just like the example I gave earlier, the difference is actually quite subtle. It's not like this huge difference is a very internalized difference too. So internally is where the shift starts. And then externally, I think we could see a difference, but it's going to start internally, internally, specifically with. where your mind settles, what you think about over and over, over again, like what you spend your day ruminating on. So like I said, both terms are similar. Self pity involves dwelling on one's own suffering and then feeling isolated. While self compassion means treating yourself with kindness and understanding and recognizing that everyone Experiences, difficulties, and it allows you to see your experience with a broader human context. The key here is not feeling alone in your struggles. Essentially self pity is like, poor me, while self compassion is about acknowledging your pain while still supporting yourself with So this alternative model, the second option I'm suggesting is really acknowledging that like we all, if we stand back for a second and my assertion here is that if you go to any one of your non special needs moms, you're going to find that they have their own unique pains and struggles and challenges. For some it's cancer, for some it's war, and I'm kind of looking globally here. For some it's abuse. First time, it's natural disasters for a son, poverty, or even just financial strain or stress. First time, mental health, I mean, shall I go on? Because I think if we really stand back and look at like life, the life experience, I think we're going to recognize we all actually have a lot more in common than we might realize. You might have to look a layer or two deeper. So the thing that I'm trying to say here is this is the human experience that we are not the only people, community that has it hard. I'm going to emphasize that I am saying that with love. It's with the acknowledgement that this is excruciatingly hard. And. And it's the key word here. And life is about doing hard things. Okay. I love you. Merry Christmas. For those of you who celebrate in the Christian tradition, my Christmas wish, you is that you experience the peace of God this season, especially in the context of this conversation and all that's wrong or hard, devastating and heartbreaking in the world. How good is it to have hope in pure love? And for those not in the Christian tradition, that is the belief is that Jesus is pure love. And we will see you on the next episode.